Does Legal Permanence Translate into Relational Permanence?: The Accounts of Young Adults with Foster Care Histories
Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 31 young adults (average age 27 years old) who exited foster care (average age 15 years old) through legal permanence: adoption (32.5%), subsidized guardianship (35%), or long-term foster care with relatives (32.5%). The adoption group (20%) was less likely compared to the subsidized guardianship group (73%) to achieve permanency with a relative; however, by design, all of those in the relative group achieved permanence with a relative. Interview questions focused on young adults’ relationships with caretakers’ overtime. Key factors coded include affective tone used to describe relationship with caretaker, current relational status with caretaker, and five dimensions of relational permanence including such factors as a sense of belonging and caretaker openness to their biological family.
Results: Results reveal four types of young adult-caregiver relationships: enduring, ambivalent, spurned, and severed. The enduring group (35%) was distributed across the sample and is characterized by a presence of an intact caretaker-young adult relationship, a positive affective relational tone, and a consistent pattern of affirmative responses involving all five dimensions of relational experiences. In contrast, the severed group (26%) was concentrated in the adoption and subsidized guardianship groups and characterized by the absence of an intact caretaker-young adult relationship because either the young adult or caretaker cut ties, a negative affective relational tone, and a distinct pattern of unaffirmative responses across the five dimensions of relational experiences. The ambivalent group (26%) was distributed across the sample and the caregiver-young adult relationships remained intact, a mixed affective relational tone, and a mixed pattern of responses on the five dimensions of relational permanence that indicated positive and negative experiences. The spurned group (13%), also distributed across the sample, relationships with caretakers did not remain intact because caretaker cut ties despite young adults conveying a desire to retain ties. This group also expressed a mixed affective relational tone, and mixed responses on the five dimensions of relational permanence.
Conclusions and Implications: The diversity of relational permanence represented in this small sample exemplifies the complexity and nuance involved in the translation of legal permanence to relational permanence. Achieving legal permanence does not assure relational permanence. Moreover, achieving relational permanence does not seem to be a function of biological relationships or type of legal permanence. A future research agenda will be discussed that includes the unintended consequences of solely focusing on legal permanence as an outcome and maximizing young adult well-being over legal permanency outcomes.